Do you keep a record of your thoughts?

I don’t keep anything like that. I’m not the type of person who write down my thoughts. I prefer to keep it in my head. And I remember most of my thoughts, fortunately.

Heh I would be a skeleton dried up somewhere they are too fleeting .

I keep a diary which includes some dreams and occasional thoughts.

I’m not going to brag and say that “I have so many and in such quick succession that I would spend all my time writing them down” … but I do have quite a number of them, and quite often. I don’t often attempt to memorialize them, but I do tend to voice them in one way or another (which means that some of them get written into emails, Facebook … and here – much less frequently these days), or best of all, volleyed back and forth with someone else in person. Fortunately we have a good group of decent conversationalists at work. That is, they’re decent people who can hold a conversation and they will sometimes indulge my occasional stream-of-consciousness flow while we’re searching for a solution to a problem – because we have a lot of problems, and I think about them a lot, and if it’s not “my idea” that solves the problem du jour, then it’s often one of the parents (or cousin) to the one that does.

When I think of things unrelated to a topic that someone else has broached, such as story ideas, plot twists, ‘better dialogue’ that should have been in the book I’m reading, for example, or other bon mots, then they generally just go back into the mix of random ideas in my head. They’ll generally reappear one day, since it’s a pretty friendly and collegial mix in there, and they speak to each other.

For the ideas that I simply must capture and nurture with special care, there’s Evernote.

I journal my sparks of wisdom before they escape. Sometimes they are notes for someone to read later, sometimes just images of some trout that surface in my thought.

^^ Doesn’t thinking about fish get tedious after a while?

I find that the process of trying to write my thoughts a very frustrating one. It’s like attempting to do a photo-realistic drawing of someone only to find that all of your efforts have amounted to this.

More often than not, I find that I will start a journal or writing project only to completely forget about it 4 entries later. I think what happens is that I realize how the process of writing about something takes away from what I wanted to write about in some way. In a way, I find creating music more accurately reflects thought/emotion than my words do. I suppose it would be different if I had the tools to be able to communicate accurately. When it’s a challenge to communicate thoughts and emotions that are bouncing around in my brain with myself and fail, frustration takes over.

My most successful writing have been far less wordy. The first was an attempt to just note a sentence or two of something that appeared in consciousness, is quite simple, but is difficult to remember. This amounts to important things I need to remember and reads like a Chicken Soup for the Fake Buddha Quotes Soul book. The second attempt has been a gratitude journal.

Ideas that arise are almost as fleeting as my dreams. I try to save those that remain, which are usually fragments, in a Word document. Sometimes, I will write or sketch them out on a legal pad when pen and pad are nearby; the thoughts usually fade while searching.

I started making notes on paper pads fifty some years ago. I have a carton-and-a-half full of them in storage (don’t ask why, I don’t know, maybe OCD). My Word doc is called Brief Note. It is anything but brief, and there are several Brief Note-date files each containing a couple of years going back decades (again, don’t ask me why).

Most of my ‘bright’ thinking is in the morning. Especially when I wake up, and when I shower. I usually try to either discuss them asap or frame them into some sort of question here on Fluther. Sometimes it makes for awkward sounding [or non-PC] questions, but it captures my thought and generates some discussion.

I have always kept diaries. However, they’ve changed forms over the years. My most oft used diary is now Facebook. The best thoughts also get transferred to a diary I keep in Word.

No. Why surround yourself with incriminating evidence?

I write down thoughts in relation to my research. For instance, when I’m consciously or unconsciously pondering and an idea comes into my head that I think I need to explore further. Beyond that, no. I’d like to be disciplined enough to do that (if I had a thought I thought was profound enough to be recorded) but I’m not.

I have on occasions tried journaling to keep a record of what’s happening in my life, but again, my lack of discipline prevents me doing it enough to be worthwhile.

I write things down all the time. I hate forgetting my ideas.

Thanks. In case you’re wondering, that thought is still being missed.

@longgone I know. It’s just I don’t feel comfortable to write down my thought. I’m that strange :P

No, only the lyrics to a new song i write that down, that’s about it.